CAUGHT UNAWARES

Gently, Jeffrey Collins rubbed the sleep from his bleary eyes and calmly opened them upon the intriguing spectacle of his wife getting dressed. She had pulled back the curtains of their bedroom windows to let-in the early-morning light, and now that he was awake he noticed how bright it was in the room and how clearly everything stood out and captured his attention, especially the slender though shapely figure of Rachel, at present clad in nothing more than a pair of pink nylon panties and a matching brassiere, the slender strap of which was partly visible to either side of her long black hair. At that moment she had her back to him and was pulling a nylon stocking into place over her right thigh with attentive care, no doubt from fear of laddering or poking a hole in it, and with an air that suggested that she was putting the finishing touches to a work of art. Which, in a sense, she was. For dressing was a kind of art in itself with Rachel Collins - applied rather than fine art, so to speak. And she knew how to dress herself, indeed she did!

As yet, however, she wasn't aware that Jeffrey was watching her, and so there was something pleasingly natural and unselfconscious about her movements, something agreeably unpretentious, one might almost say. Had she suddenly turned around and caught her husband staring at her with that complacently-admiring expression on his face, she would almost certainly have smiled in self-satisfaction at him or, rather, to herself, as women often did when they thought they were being admired. And her subsequent actions would probably have been correspondingly more self-conscious and artificial. However, she did not turn around, but straightaway proceeded to the other leg, balancing precariously on one foot as she gently pulled the stocking over her calf muscle and attended to its heel. The self-conscious sex, as Jeffrey Collins liked to think of women, was in this case objectively engaged in the art of dressing, and thus otherwise preoccupied.

Oh, but what a rump she had! He could hardly fail to appreciate, perhaps for the thousandth time, the shapely outlines of her buttocks and the gentle curve of her hips, as she bent forward to put the finishing touches to the garbing of her left leg. Right from the beginning, from the very first days of their romance, he had been keenly appreciative of the quality of her rump, which, though firm and ample, was not over-large. To him, it signified a golden mean of feminine beauty, and was always a pleasure both to look at and to touch - that is, to hold, stroke, pat, squeeze, press, prod, rub, smack, etc., as the situation seemingly warranted. Of all the weapons at her disposal for the conquest of the male it was subordinate only to her face and legs, perhaps the third greatest physical asset she possessed. Its enticing contours had more than once overcome his carnal reserve, so to speak, and induced him to launch a coital attack that could only result in a sexual victory for her. For she was by no means unaware of the power it exerted over him or of the esteem in which he held it, deeming it a rump in a million. Perhaps in reality it was a rump in two or five or even ten millions, though he had never bothered to wonder if it might be, preferring to settle into the cliché of a nice round figure and leave the matter at that.

But he had little doubt that it was a rather special rump and possibly compensated for her breasts, which were so small that one often wondered why she bothered to wear a brassiere at all. Perhaps because she didn't have the courage not to wear one, to come face-to-face, as it were, with their diminutive size and the consequent realization that, by adult female standards, she was something of a freak? Perhaps the brassiere served to hide or, at any rate, minimize this physical defect by creating appearances to the contrary?

Jeffrey didn't know for sure and, from fear of hurting her feelings, he had never dared to inquire into the matter. But, being a rather perspicacious psychologist in his own right, he couldn't dismiss the possibility as a mere figment of the imagination. In all probability, it was one of a number of motives she had for wearing a bra, if not the chief one then almost certainly a significant and valid one. The fact that it also served to enhance her femininity and appeal to the fetishist in him couldn't be ignored, either. And he would have been the last person to pretend he didn't like it, or that it wasn't a viable weapon in her assault on his sensibility.

Nevertheless the fact that she had extremely small breasts couldn't be denied, and Jeffrey fancied it to some extent explained not only why she had such a seductive rump, but also the reason he had gradually come to attach so much sexual importance to it, ascribing to it a status which it might not otherwise have warranted, had she been more generously endowed elsewhere. No doubt, that was why he spent more time caressing her rump than fondling her breasts. For it had largely taken over the role of the latter, concentrating her sexuality about the middle of her body. There was, however, a chance that if she subsequently bore offspring, the exigencies of motherhood would bring about a transformation in the size of her breasts, thereby endowing her with a new sexual dimension. If so, then so much the better! thought Jeffrey. He reckoned he could do with a change of sexual perspective!

She had pulled the second stocking into place and was now bending over further than before, stretching a hand down to straighten-out and smooth-over the nylon material in the region of her toes. Looking at her thus, it was impossible for Jeffrey Collins not to become sexually aroused, and he felt his penis acquiring a kind of autonomous life of its own under the quilt as it slowly expanded and slid across part of his lower abdomen. Now he could see the patch of firmer material sown into her panties about the region of her crotch, as well as the outlines of her labia, with their at times fairly-pronounced clitoral cynosure snugly nestled in-between. It was, to say the least, an alluring sight, and one that rarely failed to exert a spell on him, even at this virgin time of day. To claim she was seductive, viewed thus, would have been an understatement. She was positively ravishing! The mystique of her feminine charm was undeniably potent, and had she remained in that position a moment longer he might have felt obliged to jump out of bed and have his way with her, like a behaviouristic rat responding to a programmed stimulus. But, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one's standpoint, she soon straightened up and walked towards the dresser.

From fear she should notice him staring at her in the reflection of the dressing-table mirror, he closed his eyes and feigned sleep. Of course, it wouldn't really matter if she did notice him, considering that they were married and extremely well-acquainted with each other by now. Yet, all the same, he wanted to prolong this context, in which she was unselfconsciously preoccupied and unaware of his attention, a little while longer. It was pleasant, after all.

Yes, and as he lay there, listening to her movements in front of the dresser, an image of her slenderness came into his mind's eye and he half-smiled his satisfaction of her beauty, satisfied, as much as anything, that he was actually married to this woman whose beauty left little - if one discarded her diminutive breasts - to be desired. Was there another woman in the world to whom he would rather be married? No, he didn't think so, and this realization enhanced his satisfaction, emphasizing his complacency in partnership. She was just right for him and he, for his part, was just right for her. A pair of slender people together. She was undoubtedly one of the highest types of women in the world, being so lean and yet shapely, such a paradoxical combination of fleshiness and slenderness, seduction and primness. Her beautifully-round fleshy arms narrowing down to a pair of angular wrists of seemingly extreme fragility. Her oval-shaped calf muscles, slender yet well-formed, leading up to her amply seductive womanly thighs, on which reposed that alluring rump in a million with its overarching buttocks which, in tight-fitting jeans, were the envy of many a passing female. And of course her curvy hips and narrow waist, the delicate nape and firm shoulder blades which, in addition to her more private charms, contributed to the overall harmony of her person with a subtlety worthy of great art.

Yes, coupled to her fine intelligence and spiritual disposition, her slenderness virtually guaranteed that she was one of the highest types of women - the result of generations of careful breeding. Beneath her were all the medium-built women, those average sensual females with fleshier thighs and rump, larger breasts, more powerful arms, thicker necks, etc., who constituted a majority and appealed, as a rule, to medium-built men. They were closer to the ideal of Rubens or Boucher than to that of, say, Rossetti or Bourne-Jones: closer, in a manner of speaking, to the Devil. And beneath them, as the lowest stratum of women, were the corpulent, those who were obliged to carry an excess of fat about with them wherever they went and who were more often than not fit prey for similarly-constituted men. Their sensuality was usually of an above-average nature, and so they stood closest of all to the Devil. There were more than a few such corpulent bodies falling heavily to Hell in Rubens' great painting The Fall of the Damned, and, no doubt, he would have had more sympathy with them than certain other artists.

But there it was, facts were facts and they couldn't be denied. One had a body and whether that body was fat or thin or somewhere in-between ... made a significant contribution towards determining one's evolutionary status in the world. For as Jeffrey Collins liked to maintain, evolution was a sort of journey from Hell to Heaven, from the sensual to the spiritual, and consequently the more spiritual one was, the higher one stood in the human hierarchy and the closer, in consequence, to the future culmination of evolution in pure spirit. By not having too much flesh to carry about, one was less prone to sensual distractions and indulgences than those who were physically dominated by the flesh. It was fundamentally as simple, in Jeffrey's estimation, as that!

And so, by definition, higher-class women were slender, lower-class women plump or fat, and middle-class women ... somewhere in between. One might even argue that corpulent people were effectively pagan, or sensuous; medium-built people effectively Christian, or intellectual; and slender people effectively transcendental, or spiritual. One's physique and psyche were intimately connected, and this fact largely determined how one saw the world and what one did in it. A person with an excess of fat could hardly be expected to ascribe as much importance to the spirit as a slim person, and, considered objectively, it was evident that his/her physical constitution was inferior to the latter's, since signifying a greater attachment, in its sensuality, to the natural world. For nature was, after all, of sensuous origin and couldn't possibly be equated with spirit - not, at any rate, in this day and age. The more natural one was, the lower one stood in relation to human evolution, which was a progression, so Jeffrey liked to believe, from the natural to the supernatural, and thus towards the eventual establishment of Heaven. Like it or not, the truth was manifest and couldn't be denied. The spirit was slowly triumphing over the flesh.

But there were, however, moments when it was right for the flesh to triumph over the spirit, which it could do even where such an intelligent, slender, and beautiful woman as Rachel Collins was concerned. For even if one approximated, in evolutionary terms, to the top of the human hierarchy, one was still a man or a woman, not yet a component of the transcendental Beyond, and consequently one was under some obligation towards the flesh. As a woman, one might go in for all the slimming and yoga one liked, but still one was a woman and one's vagina more than mere decoration. There was a raison d'être to it all right, which resided in ensuring the propagation of the species. At least, that was the essential function of the sexual apparatus, though these days, what with the further development of civilization away from nature, no person worthy of the name 'civilized' could possibly content himself with regarding sex merely from a utilitarian or naturalistic standpoint, as though something to be indulged in for no other purpose than the propagation of the species! On the contrary, while the essential function of the sexual apparatus was still acknowledged and occasionally given its due, one increasingly permitted oneself a less natural and, on the whole, more artificial attitude towards sex, which reflected the degree of one's spiritual sophistication in the face of purely naturalistic criteria. Not to be capable of sex-for-sex's sake would indeed, to Jeffrey's way of thinking, have constituted a failing in regard to the evolutionary progression from Hell to Heaven. As a contraceptionless propagator, one was simply closer to the natural-world-order, and thus to Hell. But as a person who could to some extent triumph over the natural-world-order and thereby spiritualize sex, one was clearly of a generation or civilization on the path to Heaven, to the eventual transformation of man into pure spirit at the culmination of human evolution.

Yes, there were all sorts of ways of spiritualizing sex, not least of all through the media of sex magazines and sex films and sex tapes and even sex dolls. Our age was indeed prolific in devising alternatives to natural sex, and in that, as in so many other respects, it had brought civilization to its highest ever level - a level, however, which the future would doubtless surpass as things became ever more spiritually-inclined, and so drew closer to the establishment of ultimate divinity. Of course, the degree of one's sexual evolution wasn't only determined by the extent of civilization being manifested at any given time, but was also a personal matter, relating to one's temperament and physique, class and environment, as well as reflecting one's attitude to life and even, in some measure, one's private circumstances.

As far as Jeffrey was concerned, sex-in-moderation was his preferred mean, a mean also honoured by his wife, who was likewise both physically and spiritually qualified to endorse it. A lesser woman would undoubtedly have been more demanding of him, requiring sexual satisfaction on a more regular basis than merely once a week. But, as already noted, Rachel was effectively one of the highest types of women, and thus given to the spiritual to a much greater extent than to the sensual. They had come to terms with each other on a mutually acceptable basis, and it was only very rarely that this basis was infringed! They both knew what they wanted from life and where it was tending - how it would end. Teilhard de Chardin's philosophy, with its endorsement of a spiritual convergence towards an omega point, the transcendent goal of evolution, had made a profound impression on them, clarifying their obligations to each other. It was their duty, they felt, to act the part of spiritual leaders in or near the vanguard of evolutionary progress. Not too exclusively of course, but certainly with a reasoned consistency which never completely lost track of the correct path to follow. When they made love, for instance, they did so on the understanding of paying their dues to the flesh, not simply enjoying themselves. There was a higher love than sensual love, and that was the love with which they were primarily concerned - namely spiritual love. Perhaps Rachel, being a woman, was slightly less concerned with it, overall, than Jeffrey. Nevertheless she was certainly concerned with it to some extent - a fact which elevated her above the average sensual level of femininity, giving her a specific orientation in life.

But poor Jeffrey Collins was almost ashamed, these days, that he had actually been in love with Rachel at one time and, to some extent, was still in love with her even now. For this love wasn't a spiritual thing, but came from nature as a very sensual, physical, passionate thing! In this day and age love in that sense was indeed a blow to one's spiritual self-esteem, a kind of romantic disease that was increasingly regarded, by the more spiritually-sophisticated and progressive people, with a certain ironic detachment coupled, at times, to a degree of pity or contempt for its victims. Here we were, becoming ever more godly, ever more given to the spirit, when suddenly an eruption of romantic love threw us into confusion and reminded us that, for all our evolutionary progress, we were still human and thus subject, in some degree, to the laws of nature!

Yes, we were still human, though not, thank God, passionately romantic! We were steadily outgrowing our sensuous past and becoming more acutely aware of the difference between Hell and Heaven. We didn't regard sensual love with the complacency that our grandfathers or great-grandfathers might have done. We knew that it acted as a kind of hindrance to our spiritual progress, even though it was generally less powerful these days than in times when men lived closer to nature. The chances of an intelligent big-city person being struck down with a romantic passion akin to Dante's for Beatrice were, to say the least, pretty remote. And even a passion akin to that of Lord Byron's for Lady Hamilton would have had the cards stacked against it. Only someone from a predominantly rural background would be likely to succumb to the romantic bug on a Dante-esque or even a Byronic scale, and thus bring the past to light in the present, though at the risk of public ostracism or even mockery.

Yet even if Jeffrey's love for Rachel had never attained to anything like the passionate levels experienced by the aforementioned poets (not to mention the great poets of the past in general), still it had been sufficiently strong to cause him to gloat over her body with a frequency and ardour which imposed a degree of humiliation upon his latter-day ego whenever he reflected upon it. To think that, a little over a year ago, the body of this woman should have had such a powerful effect on him, causing him to forsake all higher matters! It was almost enough to make one blush with shame! And when he wasn't actually admiring her body or making love to it, he was dreaming or thinking about her, and to such an alarming extent that his professional commitments often suffered, and he found himself reprimanded, on a number of occasions, by both the principal violinist and the conductor of the New City Orchestra, in which he was a first violinist, for slack musicianship - playing out-of-tune or time or whatever. Indeed, he had nearly lost his post over her! But now, thank God, all that was history and he could once more fiddle with a clear head.

Gone, too, were the days when he would drag her along to the opera in the evening, to sit through a performance of Faust or Carmen or Manon or some such romantic masterpiece in one of the leading venues. If he took her anywhere on his evening off, these days, it was usually to an instrumental concert, where he could have the privilege of watching and listening to an orchestra for a change, and where the programme would more than likely be dedicated to such spiritually-uplifting masterpieces as, say, Poulenc's Organ Concerto or Rubbra's Seventh Symphony or Schoenberg's Werklärte Nacht or Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Then they could acknowledge the superiority of the spirit over the senses, even though the spirit of such great music patently issued from sensuous means! But occasionally his humanity reasserted itself at the expense of his ideals and he was accordingly obliged to take her to a concert featuring a less spiritually-elevated programme - one in which, say, Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony or Strauss' Don Juan or Liszt's Faust Symphony were the principal attractions. It had even happened, doubtless following a period of rather too intense and ambitious spirituality, that they had relapsed into romantic opera together, one evening, and accordingly sat through a performance of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, though not without noting in advance that it was the lesser of a number of alternative evils. On the way back from the Opera, Jeffrey had discreetly though sincerely confessed to having quite enjoyed the performance, but added, as though to forestall criticism and boast of his spiritual endeavour, that he had spent more time studying the lighting and stage scenery than listening to either the words or the music. Rachel had returned him a sympathetic glance and let the matter rest. But they had purged themselves of a sensual temptation anyway, and soon became weekly visitors to the concert hall again.

These past few weeks, however, Jeffrey Collins had been too busy rehearsing and performing with his orchestra to be in any way disposed to attending a concert, so had contented himself with taking his wife to the theatre once or twice and spending the rest of his free time with a book - a habit which Rachel didn't seem to mind, since she was pretty bookish herself and quite able to relax indoors of an evening. As a rule, her reading mostly paralleled his and, consequently, they were in a position to exchange views about whichever author happened to be of mutual interest to them both at any given time. Lately he had conceived a passion - if that's the right word - for Lawrence Durrell, and had accordingly read Monsieur and Livia in quick succession, passing the former on to her when he had finished it and continuing with the latter. These two novels had made such a strong impression on him that he immediately set about reading Constance, the sequel to Livia, which was proving no less entertaining. To be sure, he was full of admiration for Durrell and had communicated some of this admiration to Rachel, who, having completed Monsieur, duly agreed that he was a truly considerable artist of world stature whose work was virtually in a class by itself. Not that they agreed with everything he wrote! For the Templar heresy, to which Durrell gives much attention in Monsieur, was in their opinion a genuine heresy, contrary to the evolution of the world away from evil towards good. Not for one moment would Jeffrey agree with Durrell that an evil god had usurped the throne of the good god in the context of historical association put forward by the latter-day descendants of the Templars. To him, it was incontrovertible that the world was evolving towards good and slowly but surely becoming a better place in which to live. Even the official dethronement of Christ by Marx in certain countries in the twentieth century didn't strike him as forming an analogy with the Templar heresy of the dethronement of good by evil, even if, on a superficial and rather short-term basis, it could be construed as such, particularly in its Stalinist guise.

No, he was quite convinced that everything was gradually working out for the better and that good, in the guise of the godly or spiritual in man, was slowly gaining the ascendancy over evil. Accordingly, the Templar heresy remained for him genuinely heretical, despite his acknowledgement of Durrell's genius, which struck him as second-to-none. Indeed, he was immensely relieved to have found a successor, at last, to Aldous Huxley in his literary admirations. For ever since reading through the last of Huxley's eleven or so novels, some months ago, he had been searching for another novelist in whom to take a special interest and had almost lost hope, at one point, that he would ever succeed. Now, however, he believed he had at length found what he was looking for, and it quite delighted him, filling a literary void which no other novelist in-between times had managed to do, not even Christopher Isherwood, whom he quite admired as a prosodist. But Lawrence Durrell - well, it seemed not improbable that he was an even greater artist than Aldous Huxley, since a more genuine novelist with a no-less intelligent mind. Perhaps a shade less spiritual on the whole, but certainly no less interesting and distinguished! Admittedly, his thematic approach to the novel was totally different from Huxley's. Yet it was an approach which all genuine lovers of the serious novel could only admire. And his technique betrayed a painstaking professionalism worthy of great literature. Yes, Jeffrey was indeed pleased with his latest discovery. Now he was not just a Huxley enthusiast but a Huxley-Durrell enthusiast. Yes, why not? He smiled to himself at the thought of it and opened his eyes again.

Meanwhile his wife had abandoned the dresser and was now rummaging around in the wardrobe, presumably hunting for a skirt to wear. She still had her back to him in this capacity and he could see that she had put on a pink slip, which came two-thirds of the way down her thighs. It, too, was nylon, and he could easily distinguish the outline of her panties through it and the thicker material of a suspender belt which she had also put on while his eyes were closed, and, evidently, by threading the suspenders through the legs of her briefs! A tiny strip of this belt was now directly visible above the waist of her slip. She was in the habit of wearing such belts whenever she put on stockings these days, which was more often than used to be the case. Indeed, Jeffrey could remember, from when they first met, that she used to wear long dresses most of the time without stockings underneath, occasionally wearing knee-length denim skirts and showing off bare calf-muscles. As a teenager, she had grown up on the hippy wavelength and accordingly established her dressing along roughly hippy lines, her penchant for long dresses naively betraying a bias, in Jeffrey's estimation, for autocratic criteria which would have entitled any knowledgeable and unscrupulously predatory male who happened to relate to such immoral attire to descend upon her, like a beast of prey, and take her from behind. She had even been to India for a number of months and, on returning to England, adopted Indian-style dress, going to her temporary office job garbed in a bright nylon sari that, taken in conjunction with her lightweight leather sandals, brought more than a dash of Oriental exoticism to an otherwise prosaic and all-too-Occidental environment! Not the least of her eccentricities, as Jeffrey liked to think of them, had been the addition of a small caste mark to her brow. Understandably, there must have been quite a few people, Asians as well as Europeans, who were perplexed or surprised by her appearance!

But she had abandoned all that Oriental excess some time ago, and now her saris stayed folded over their hangers for months on-end, only occasionally being dragged out of hibernation, so to speak, as the result of a nostalgic whim on her part or a special request from her husband. He thought them sexy, and not only on account of the degree of their transparency, which conveniently allowed one to glimpse the outlines of legs and rump, but also as regards the expanse of naked belly and back they permitted one to see in consequence of the winding technique of dressing imposed by the elongated material. It made a pleasant change to the usual Occidental habits of dressing, anyway. Still, he wouldn't have been led to reflect on her previous clothing at all, had it not been for what she was currently wearing, the semi-transparency of her slip having connoted with the like-quality of her saris and thereupon caused him to extend his thoughts beyond the confines of stockings and suspender belts. Now, however, she was very definitely a different woman from what she used to be - altogether more discreet and conservative. She would no more have considered going out in nothing more than a flimsy sari than coming home in nothing more than a flimsy slip! She had lost much of that youthful daring, not to mention naiveté, no longer desiring to impose her beauty on the world in such brutally seductive and forthright terms, but preferring the way of restraint and subtle enticement. She had got what she wanted from the world anyway, and consequently had no further need to advertise herself in block capitals, so to speak. As a happily-married woman she had already been bought - almost literally so! For Jeffrey Collins increasingly tended to look upon her as his property, to be fondled or manipulated at will.

At the present moment in time, however, he was still looking upon her as a woman, watching her drag first a white vest from the wardrobe and then a short light-grey skirt, which she proceeded to step into on-the-spot, not bothering to turn around. Yes, he might have known she would choose that one, since it went so well with her dark stockings and granted her an endearingly academic look. It was warm too, and this time of year, what with snow on the ground, one needed something secure about one. And not just to keep out the cold! He half-smiled to himself again as he remembered that young woman he had noticed in the street, the day before, who was dressed in a flimsy cotton skirt with which the wind played havoc. Whether or not she specifically wanted to draw attention to herself, attention was certainly what she drew whenever the wind lifted her tiny flounced skirt beyond the bounds of least modesty, as it so often did. Standing at a nearby bus stop, he could see, as she entered a shop - perhaps as much to escape the weather as anything else - that she was wearing beige knickers and wasn't at all badly built! Maybe, after all, there was something about the wind for which one had to be grateful?

He almost chuckled at the thought and once more closed his eyes. For Rachel, having secured the tight-fitting skirt about her waist, suddenly abandoned the wardrobe and came over towards him, carrying a pair of pink shoes which she intended to step into and fasten while sitting on the edge of their bed. The image of that young woman in the street was duly eclipsed by an image of himself at rehearsal with the New City Orchestra, surrounded by his familiar colleagues in the first violin section. Another couple of hours and he would be back among them, fiddling away for dear life. And in company with a number of other violinists, he would doubtless be feeling some of the frustration and disapproval of the previous day's rehearsals. For this new work by Timothy Graves was not only damnably difficult to perform, particularly as far as the first violins were concerned, it was maddeningly anarchic moreover, and not at all what Jeffrey Collins would normally have understood by the term 'fine music'.

No, it was certainly not his musical cup of tea, this new Graves composition, and he was hardly looking forward to rehearsing it again. But the première was on Saturday, so there was no way that either he or any of his more disapproving colleagues could wiggle out of it. Willy-nilly, the work had to be perfected in the meantime or, at any rate, played at something approaching concert standard if its composer was to be satisfied. All those diabolical glissandos, atonal scales, violent sforzandos, and criminal interval leaps would have to be borne with fortitude worthy of a bona fide stoic. Verily, one had one's cross to bear in this life and, so far as Jeffrey Collins was concerned, Grave's new symphony was certainly a significant contribution to its overall weight!

Still, there had been one or two light-hearted moments during yesterday's trying rehearsal for which to be grateful. Like the occasion, for instance, when Tony King, who was suffering from a violent cold, had sneezed while playing his tuba, and thereupon added a couple of unofficial notes to the score which almost gave the markedly atonal passage upon which they were all painstakingly engaged at the time a hint of melodic vitality. And then old John Crawford had snapped a string on his viola during one of the more intensively discordant passages and exclaimed: 'Oh, damn it all!', to the visible amusement of those who thought he was referring to the passage in question. And of course Margaret Boyle had contrived to knock over a music stand or two in quiet passages, as she usually did when obliged to shift the position of her 'cello to any appreciable extent. Well, whether there would be more of that kind of thing today ... remained to be seen or, rather, heard. At least it sufficed to add a little humour to an otherwise austere experience! Though, of course, not everyone was amused by it, least of all the composer, who, even in the midst of the most cacophonous passages, retained an acute ear for any little deviation from the printed score, and would almost certainly cast a critical, not to say stony, eye on the offender(s)!

However, one of these days Jeffrey Collins would present the world with an avant-garde composition of his own, which would be far superior to anything Graves had ever done! A paean to the spirit and the triumph of mind over matter, a testimony to human progress towards consummate goodness, or some such petty-bourgeois delusion which turned a blind-eye or, in his case, deaf-ear to the more blatantly evil examples of proletarian barbarism. There would be nothing Lisztian about it, nothing overtly or even covertly dualistic. Still less anything overtly or covertly diabolical, and hence savagely discordant! On the contrary, only the godly would be countenanced, and hence only that which appertained to the brightest, most harmonious and spiritually-edifying tone. A truly transcendent work, if not exclusively then certainly predominantly good. One dedicated to the furtherance of the Holy Spirit. Superior even to the religious music of Bach and Handel in its tonal brilliance, its refined spirituality, post-egocentric simplicity, and chaste beauty. Purged, as it were, of gross sensuality and vulgar exhibitionism. Elevated beyond the Christian. Yes, and in due course people would come to appreciate just how superior it was to such compositions as those in which Timothy Graves ordinarily specialized, what with their diabolical savagery in extended cacophony! They would have no trouble distinguishing the devils from the gods, and would be able to denounce the former as pernicious degenerates, while regarding the latter with a new admiration born of spiritual enlightenment. But in the meantime - ah, it was obligatory for Jeffrey to toe-the-decadent-line and heroically endure the manifest ignominy of once again rehearsing and subsequently performing Graves' latest 'Satanic' symphony. Perhaps one of these days he would be in a position to be choosier, maybe even to the extent of abandoning classical for jazz. But at present ...

He heard a slight rustle of nylon stockings somewhere to his left and slyly opened his eyes in the hope of catching Rachel unawares again. To his shocked surprise, however, he discovered her standing beside the bed with hands on hips and staring down at him with an ironic grin on her face. He almost blushed with shame. How long had she been standing there, he wondered?

"Ah, so the sleeper finally wakes!" she exclaimed, bending down closer in order to peer into his relatively sleepless eyes. "I wondered when he would damn-well get around to it!"

He blankly stared back at her, a victim of his own deception. "What time is it?" he at length asked, endeavouring to act the part of one who has just woken up.

"High time you were out of bed," Rachel replied without bothering to consult her watch.

He grunted reluctant acknowledgement of this all-too-evident fact, and inquired how long she had been staring down at him like that?

"Oh, no more than a couple of minutes," she confessed, grinning anew. "You had such a curious expression on your smug little face that I became quite intrigued by it, wondering what-the-hell you could be dreaming about!"

"Oh, really?" he feebly responded, suddenly becoming a twinge embarrassed. "As a matter of fact, I've completely forgotten." Which lie obliged him to lower his eyes from fear she might see through him. "Nothing very erotic at any rate," he added, as an afterthought.

Rachel bent down further and kissed him on the brow. "Never mind, darling, you've always got your loving wife where that's concerned," she averred.

"Yes," he admitted, nodding gratefully in spite of the pillow on which his head was still resting. And, as though to confirm the basic truth of her statement, he gently ran his hand up the back of her dark-stockinged legs. Touch, he reflected, was always better than sight where women like her were concerned!